The Next Two Years
by Manti
Summary: A story following Lux during her last two years of high school. High school AU. Rough draft. Will be editing chapters later/once story is completed, so sorry. This story came from my bf and I debating who was our favorite pairing for Lux, haha. (since I started this, Sylas has become a champion and contender apparently. I should have written faster)
1. First Day of School Pt 1

A royal blue mustang rolled into the Runeterra High parking lot. It didn't screech around the corner like it was first place in the Indy 500, the way most would expect from a flashy car, desperate to show off. If a car could saunter, then this one would be doing just that, purring self-assuredly underneath its white-striped hood as it pulled into an open space in the lot. The car went silent as the engine was cut, but the doors didn't open quite yet.

"You got everything ready for your first day, Lux?" The broad-shouldered boy in the driver's seat turned to look at his blonde-haired passenger as he slipped off his seatbelt. His brown eyes were filled with genuine concern as he looked from the girl's face to her slightly-see through plastic backpack. Even though Lux was only twenty-two months younger than him, and just one year below him in school, Garen had always taken the "protective older brother" thing very seriously.

"You sound like mom!" exclaimed Lux with a high-pitched giggle, as she rolled her eyes in faux-exasperation. "I'm not a freshman! This is my third year," she chided, hopping out of the car with a shake of her head, "but thanks, Garen." She grinned brightly at her brother over the hood of the car, then gripped the straps of her backpack on her shoulders with both hands, and started walking lightly toward the double-doored entrance of the school, merging with the growing crowd of students. "Hope you're ready for your first day!" she called over her shoulder, still smiling, while Garen smirked and slung his pack over one shoulder, taking his time, as always, to get going. Lux was already inside the building before he even made it to the sidewalk leading through the lawn.

With a bit of deft weaving, Lux made it to her locker. She pulled out the paper with her class schedule and locker combination printed on it and got to work on opening her locker. One try...two tries...Lux sighed and spun the lock ring around a few times, clearing her progress and preparing to try the combo again. She furrowed her brow and bit at the inside of her cheek. Had she really forgotten how lockers worked over the summer? She was sure she was putting it in right...After spinning in the combo for the fourth time, Lux was sure she had the code right and knew the door was just being stubborn. Being nice to the locker door wasn't doing it, so it was time to fight. Lux narrowed her eyes at the demon-door, curled her neatly-manicured fingers around the handle, and gave it two monstrous yanks.

With a loud BANG the door swung all the way open and slammed into the guy standing at his locker to the right. "What the hell?!" growled the kid, slamming Lux's locker door back closed and glaring at her from beneath a dark blue hood.

"Oh my gosh!" was the girl's mortified reply. "I am so sorry; I totally didn't expect it to fly open like that!" The boy just gave her one last glare, slammed his locker door, and faded around the corner without a single word. Heart still pounding from embarrassment, Lux unlocked her locker and opened it once more, this time with a much more controlled pull. As she placed her brown lunch bag and some extra notebooks in her locker, Lux was thinking about two things: how relieved she was that the locker didn't hit that guy in the face, and that it was against the rules to have a hood on inside.

"Hey, Lux." A tall, slender girl with long brown hair and sharp brown eyes fell in step with Lux, who was making her way to her first class - English.

"Quinn!" Lux was beaming like the sun, and she stopped right in the middle of the hall to wrap her friend in a quick hug. Quinn had been one of Lux's closest friends since the fourth grade, but they didn't really get to hang out a lot during the break. Quinn was extremely outdoorsy and was always at some kind of camp in the summer. Even in the winter, Quinn preferred to spend as much time outside as possible, but when she was confined to school, getting to hang out with Lux mitigated a lot of the misery.

With a little laugh, Quinn hugged Lux back. "So...schedules?" She jumped the to most important topic immediately, pulling out her schedule list from her pocket and eyeing the one Lux was holding loosely in her hand.

The girls quickly compared their schedules as they walked down the hall, Quinn smirking in satisfaction and Lux exclaiming in excitement when they discovered they were in the same English, history, and PE classes.

"Heeey, ladies. And now, the party can officially start." Lux lips quirked into an almost-grimace as an arm flung around her and Quinn's shoulders, a blonde boy swooping between the girls and grabbing them each in a one-armed hug. "I know you guys missed me," he joked, blue eyes twinkling impishly, yet a toss of his head to flip back his effortlessly-windswept hair-do gave away a little more self-importance than he intended.

Quinn gave a wry smile and looked up at the boy with a sidelong glance, "You need to spend a week away from mirrors." Lux glanced at Quinn and giggled, and the boy just flashed Quinn a lopsided grin in response, before tilting his head toward Lux.

"C'mon, Lux, you gonna let her talk to me like that?" he asked, now raising his brows in an attempt to look both pleading and seducing.

"You're a big boy, Ezreal, I would've thought you could fight your own battles by now," responded Lux, tilting her head up a bit more than Quinn had to in order to make eye contact. She pursed her lips slightly, trying to hold back a smile. Ezreal, exasperating as he could be sometimes, definitely added a lot of entertainment to their little party when he was around, and Lux couldn't help the fact that their banter was fun...the only problem was that she was pretty sure Ezreal didn't hang around with her just to play around. It was something she knew might have to be addressed sometime, and it was not something she was looking forward to.

Ezreal flinched exaggeratedly and mourned in a husky, wounded voice, "Wow, Lux, I thought we were friends." Quinn just rolled her eyes and shook her head while Lux couldn't help but smirk in amusement. She had to give it to him - that boy had a certain flair. "So anyway," said Ezreal, dropping his arms to break the one-man group hug and moving to the left side of Lux, so Lux could continue walking by Quinn, "where are you guys headed for first period?"

"English," replied Lux.

Ezreal's brow quirked and he looked over at the two girls with a spark of expectation. "With Professor Ryze?"

Quinn groaned and rolled her head back to look at the ceiling, but she didn't really try to hide her smile.

"Haha, you too?" asked Lux, a little bounce entering her gait for just a beat. Starting out the day in a class full of friends was a going to be awesome.

The tall blond just nodded, weaving in a quick flip of his boy-band hair. "I'm glad I actually have a class with you, Lux; I thought you were taking all these higher level classes and abandoning us, you know, because you're a genius and all." He tossed a light-hearted grin her way to emphasize the playful nature of his comment, but he definitely had asked a sincere question in there, too.

Lux shrugged and smoothed the sides of her little blue skirt as they walked, unconsciously feeling for pockets or something to do with her hands. "I am taking calculus and a physics class this year, instead of next year, but that's it; everything else is totally normal." She glanced over at Quinn and smiled a little brighter. "Quinn and I have history and PE together!"

The three continued to discuss schedules as they finished their walk to English class, Ezreal pleased to find out he and Lux shared their final period French class together and also finding out he and Quinn had the same trigonometry class. In their English class, the three chose seats together in the third row, and Ezreal waved his friends Jayce, a handsome guy who always reminded Lux a little of her brother, and Vi, a tough girl with pink hair and no qualms about punching your lights out, over to fill spots by them. Neither Lux nor Quinn had ever become really close friends with either Jayce or Vi, but they all were good enough friends and enjoyed hanging out. This was an excellent start to the day!

After English, Quinn, Lux, and Vi, split off from the others to head to their shared history class, settling in seats more toward the back of the class this time, because Vi was the one who lead them in. In the last row, in the very corner on the opposite side of the room by the outside window sat a skinny girl slumped forward in her seat, her elbow on her desk, resting her chin in her hand, while her other hand twirled one of her long blue braided pigtails. Vi and her locked eyes and glared at each other for a moment while Quinn and Lux settled in their seats, then the blue-haired girl blew a big pink bubble from her mouth and popped it loudly before grinning wildly and turning her attention to scratch something small into the top right corner of her desk. Lux regarded the gum-chewing girl briefly. Jinx was her name, and she was someone Lux knew from experience would not be in class very much.

History was going to be a very boring class this semester. Every once in awhile during the class, which simply outlined the topics they'd be covering during the next few months, the fidgeting and sighs of Jinx on the far side of the class caught Lux's attention in her peripheral view. _Yeah, Jinx isn't going to be here much_ , thought Lux, trying hard to focus back on what the teacher was saying. _I know I don't want to be._ Quinn, Vi, and Lux shared numerous desperate, bored, or just plain dead looks with each other and basically every distraught and zombified neighbor of theirs during the class. This was _such_ a bad sign.

The whole class audibly sighed in relief when the bell rang, and Jinx literally bolted for the door. Everyone else filed out at a much more restrained pace, but most wanted to run out too.

Lux, Quinn, and Vi just waved to each other once they entered the hall and went their own ways. Lux would see Quinn during their PE period and lunch after, and Vi was real big on doing her own thing, so none of them needed to say much. And really, everyone was still kind of catatonic after the most boring 50 minutes in history, so all just stumbled off to their next classes, dreading how bad the rest of their classes could get.


	2. First Day of School Pt 2

Lux's next class was physics, taught by Professer Heimerdinger. This was a class she'd been looking forward to all summer. Technically, it was for students a year above her, but Lux herself had gotten permission from the professor to take this class a year early. Lux was already planning ahead for college, and since she had the grades and background to take this class already, why not take it now and open up some slots for even higher level science classes next year?

Brimming with anticipation, Lux opened the door to the classroom and immediately was greeted by the short, blonde-and-white bearded professor. "Good morning, Miss Crownguard!" he greeted her cheerily in a high-pitched, energetic voice. "Good morning, Professor," she replied with a smile, before being waved over to an empty desk near a tall, beautiful girl.

"Janna!" Lux slipped into the desk to the right of the tall girl and slung her backpack under her desk, twisting sideways in her desk to talk to her friend. "I had no idea you were in this class!"

Janna's laugh was soft, almost serene. She had a perpetually tranquil air about her. Lux always thought Janna seemed wise for her age, like an old soul, which was a big reason Lux looked up to her. "I'm the one who should be surprised Lux; did I miss you skipping a grade?" Janna raised her eyebrows and quirked her mouth, obviously amusing herself with her joke.

Lux giggled and shook her head. "No, I just couldn't wait a year to take this class." She bounced a little in her seat and grinned brightly at Janna. "This worked out perfectly - I get to be in a class with you!"

Janna chuckled and then looked around the class. "Hmm, looks like it's going to be basically just us," she joked, raising an eyebrow at the sparsely filled classroom. There were about seven other students in the class, four in the front row, two others in the second row with Lux and Janna, and the final student in the third row behind them.

"Yeah…" Lux agreed, looking around, but not feeling as surprised as Janna looked. Physics was basically the elective option if you were a Senior who didn't want to take biology, and Professor Heimerdinger had a daunting reputation as a legit scientist. Biology was taught by Professor Ivern - everyone wanted that easy A.

A second before the final bell rang, a final student entered the classroom. Lux glanced over at him briefly before realizing it was the guy who she'd hit with her locker door earlier that morning. He made his way quickly to the open desk right behind Janna (the nearest desk to the door), head kind of ducked and eyes never straying from his destination. Lux narrowed her eyes a little at noticing he was still wearing his hood, and then she turned her attention toward the front as Professor Heimerdinger began his introduction to the class.

He gave a peppy introduction about himself and the nature of the class before beginning role call. Since Lux's last name began with a 'C', she was called on very early in the list. "Talon Du'Couteau" was the next name the professor called, and Lux looked back over her shoulder at the hooded kid when he sullenly answered, "Here." The list went on (rather quickly; there were only ten students in the class), and the blonde turned her head back toward the front. She knew the last name Du'Couteau - it was the name of Katarina, that crazy redhead Garen totally had a thing for. There was also an ambitious Du'Couteau who was the Freshman class president last year. Lux couldn't remember her name, but she knew that was Katarina's little sister. This guy had to be related to them, though it was really weird that he seemed to have been completely invisible until now. Maybe he was a cousin who just moved to the area? Lux couldn't speculate on it anymore, as Professor Heimerdinger began diving straight into the class materials.

Though this was the first class that had assigned homework the first day, Lux was still smiling as she got up to head to her next class. She obviously was very excited to be taking this class and was really looking forward to the year ahead.

With a beaming farewell to Janna and Professor Heimerdinger, Lux headed to the gym for PE.

"Hey Lux!" Quinn was waving her hand in the air to call Lux over as soon as the blonde entered the locker room. Lux hurried over, and they both animatedly started talking about their previous classes as the two girls shoved their backpacks into the lockers.

"So Lux," giggled Quinn as they started walking out to the gym, "you'll never guess who's in my Spanish class."

"Haha, who?" laughed Lux, oblivious to Quinn's tone change.

"Guess," responded the tall girl, raising a sharp eyebrow and flashing her eyes in a serious way that got Lux to start walking slower.

"...who?" The blonde tilted her head, starting to really think, now that the tone was so clear. Who did Quinn like? Who did Lux AND Quinn like? "Darius?" she breathed.

Quinn nodded emphatically, almost triumphantly. "Yes!"

"Oh Quinn, you're so lucky!"

"I know!"

Darius was a year ahead of them and one of the most popular guys in school. The two girls continued talking about it as they sat down on the gym floor with the other students, waiting for the teacher to arrive and start handing out their gym clothes for this year. The great thing about having a crush on Darius is that you never needed to be quiet about it - because everyone else either had a crush on him too, or at the very least totally understood why. He was captain of the basketball team, tall with dark hair, athletic and built, charismatic, and popular. He was one of those people who everyone grouped around, a natural leader. Lux always acknowledged that Darius was really similar to Garen in a lot of ways: captain of a sports team, good-looking, popular, and most importantly to her, a really good older brother. Darius' younger brother Draven was a Sophomore this year, and he was a character for sure. Definitely kind of annoying and bratty, and that rubbed a lot of people the wrong way. But Lux loved hearing about how Darius would stick up for his little brother (thought not as much the times when it got a little violent, according to some stories), and thus here she was, just as giddy as Quinn to find out her best friend miraculously had a class with him.

There wasn't much to do for this first day of gym, so the girls pretty much got to sit around and talk until the bell rang. They had found a few other friends their age in this class: Shyvana, Soraka, and Nami. Soraka was also in Ahri's group, a beautiful brunette girl who tended to make Lux feel a little low, but Lux appreciated that Soraka was drifting back and forth between Ahri's group and Lux's. .

Once the bell rang, the entire group walked to the cafeteria together for lunch. It was a beautiful August afternoon, so they opted to eat lunch outside in the courtyard. Everyone else in the school seemed to have the same idea, so they ate on the steps under the shade of a big oak tree. Ezreal and some buddies had joined them, and everyone was laughing at Ekko's story of how he'd been skateboarding to school that morning and had accidentally gotten knocked off his board by a low-hanging tree branch. Lux's stomach was hurting from how hard she was laughing at the way Ekko told it. She also was just so relieved to hear that she wasn't the only one with an embarrassing experience that morning.

Lunch was over too soon, and the happy group dispersed to their various classes. Ez and Quinn walked off to their trig class, and Lux went on to calculus.

The rest of the school day went by well. The only intimidating part of Lux's calculus class was that Katatrina Du'Couteau shared it with her. For half a second, Lux considered walking over to the older redhead and asking about Talon, but at that moment, Katarina had looked at something slightly in Lux's general area, and the blonde chickened out instantly. Why did everything about Katarina have to look so...scary? Garen's interest in her definitely had to be a guy thing.

French class was gonna be fun. Ezreal and Lux sat together. This was definitely going to be Lux's hardest class. She was a math and science kind of whiz, but getting an A in French was a challenge every year. Luckily, Ezreal was naturally very good at languages. Lux always joked that it was because he couldn't bear not being able to talk to every single person in existence. Ezreal always laughed along because it was kind of true. At the very least, he wanted to visit every place in existence, so might as well be able to talk to people while he was there!

"Ugh, French," Lux complained as she and Ezreal left the classroom. It kind of sucked that her last class of the day was her most difficult.

"Hey, no worries, Lux," reassured Ezreal brightly, flipping back his hair, "I've got you covered. We can study any time."

"Thanks, Ez," she sighed, still kind of down at remembering how much she actually sucked at French.

Ezreal flung his arm around her shoulder and gave her a quick squeeze. "C'mon, Lux, cut yourself some slack," told her, lowering his voice to a more serious tone. "You're brilliant; you don't have to feel bad for not being perfect at _everything_."

Oh. She realized instantly she had just become _that_ kind of girl, who was sounding like she needed validation. "Thank you, Ezreal," she said sincerely, forcing a smile on her face and stepping out of under his arm. "I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to sound like I was complaining...which I was…" She puffed out a big breath, face falling, and Ezreal laughed. In this moment, she was one hundred percent appreciative of the fact that he liked her no matter how egotistical and whiny she acted.

Still laughing at her slightly red, pouty face, Ezreal waved to her and headed off to his locker in another hall. "See you tomorrow! It'll be great!" He grinned at her and disappeared into the crowd.

'Ok, look on the bright side, look on the bright side,' she forced herself to think as she finished making her way to her locker. She didn't end up actually getting to the part where she even looked toward the bright side, but chanting was still kind of helpful in getting her mind off of her completely unnecessary self-pity.

Still repeating her mantra in her head, she forced her stubborn locker door open and swapped her French book for her Physics book she'd gotten that morning in class. Other than Calculus, Physics was the only class that had assigned any homework, so she'd only need to take those two books home with her. No problem with that!

She closed her locker door and looked to the right at Talon's locker. She'd have to find the bright side to hitting a Du'Couteau with her locker door too. That one was going to haunt her now that she knew he might be related to Katarina, who scared the daylights out of Lux.

Rolling her eyes at what a nut job Lux was starting to realize she was, she made her way out to the parking lot to meet Garen at his car.

Garen showed up after a few minutes of her waiting. "Hey sis," he greeted her, taking off his backpack to grab his car keys, "how was your first day?"

She nodded with a smile and responded, "Really good, actually; how about yours?"

"Awesome!" he exclaimed, climbing into the car and waiting for Lux to finish getting in before he continued telling her about every class he'd had that day. Lux just smiled and listened, enjoying getting to spend time with him. He'd be staying after school everyday for football practice really soon, so she even hearing about his classes and friends she wasn't super familiar with was still a cherished time for her. And he soon traded off, expecting as much detail about her day in return.

Their drive home took them up from the school into a posh neighborhood on a gentle hill. Their street was wide and bright. There were huge houses lining each side of the street, with wide lawns sprawling in front of each. Their house and all the others on the street were already high enough up the hill that the left side of the street could overlook the city from their back windows, but the houses and the views got even nicer as the street progressed higher and higher up the hill.

Kids from a few of these families on this hill went to the public high school with Lux and Garen. The Crownguard's house was pretty much in the middle of the hill. Garen's best friend Jarvan lived at the very top of the hill in Lux's favorite house on the entire street. The Du'Couteaus lived across the street and up a few houses in one of the original houses that were built on this hill, and the LeBlanc's lived just a few houses in, right as you turned on to the street.

Lux and Garen were laughing as they pulled into the Crownguard's three-car garage. Lux had just finished recounting Ekko's skateboarding story. Good think Ekko was so chill and such a good sport, because that story was probably gonna get around. It was just too funny!

As soon as the two got inside, they fell right back into their school routine. Their parents were in town but wouldn't be home for a few hours, so they both went right upstairs to their rooms to get their schoolwork done. Lux's room was large and bright. Her bedroom (and Garen's) were bigger than the master bedrooms of some of their friends' homes. There was a bathroom with her own tub to the right as soon as you walked in her room; her king-sized bed was on the left, with a huge, fuzzy gray rug in front of it; and her walk-in closet and dresser were right across from the bed, next to her bathroom. She was lucky to get a south-facing bay window, and she always had the white blinds open to let in the constant light. The hardwood floor was bleached gray-white, and her walls were painted a very light pink. She had a few gilded picture frames with photos of her friends on top of the dresser, and a few pictures of silver stars and blue flowers hanging on the walls. Her room was her favorite place in the entire house, which worked out well, since she spent so much time in there studying.

She walked in, closed the door, and went straight to her white desk, which was stationed to the left of her door. Lux slipped off her backpack and tackled her physics homework first. It wasn't hard or even very physics-y, since it was the first day, but there was a lot of brush-up math work they'd gone over today that was being reviewed as homework. It didn't even take her half an hour to complete. Feeling extremely pleased that she would be free of homework so quickly tonight, Lux reached into her backpack to pull out a separate notebook for her calculus homework.

"AHH!" she screamed, dropping the smoking notebook on her desk. Her chair toppled over as she lept to her feet, hands spread out in shock in front of her, staring wide-eyed at the notebook. There was a scorch-mark in the shape of her thumb on the cover. Glacially, as if she was in slow-motion, Lux looked down at her splayed out hands. They were glowing.


	3. Discovery

Lux's life was flashing before her eyes as she just stood there in shock, staring at her hands. There were no coherent thoughts in her head, just the pure biological burst of panic washing through her body as if her blood cells had become shards of ice. She was dying. She was spontaneously combusting. It was all over.

As black spots began clouding her vision, Lux took in a gasping breath. Oh...had she been holding that? Ok, breathe, BREATHE. She could think that one command. BREATHE. Her breaths were gulping and shaky, even as she tried to get them to even out.

As the seconds passed, the girl began to finally get a grip. She wasn't dead yet, but this was obviously an emergency. Her blue eyes, saucer-like in fear, darted to her backpack. Her phone was in there. 911!

Hands stretched out as far as they could get from her, Lux stepped sideways toward her backpack, her canvas sneakers stuttering slightly over the floor. In front of her backpack, the girl crouched and shifted her wide-eyed gaze from the backpack to her glowing hands and back again. Could she even make this call without setting the house on fire? And that's when she realized with horror that she couldn't feel her hands...or was it...she didn't feel anything...wrong?

The horror of thinking that the nerves in her hands had burned away melted into wonder as she realized she _could_ feel, a glowy warmth, almost as if she'd been warming her hands by a fire, from her fingertips to her palms. Slowly, she rotated her palms upward. Despite how insane this all was, Lux couldn't help but part her lips in a silent "oh" as she was hit by the beauty of the light emanating from her hands. It was golden and soft, with some sharp, undulating waves of white snaking around her fingers like little forks of lightning.

Gingerly, Lux flexed the fingers in her right hand. And as slowly as her movements, the light rippled up in wispy tendrils and then settled back onto her skin as she stilled. Then, about as suddenly as it had appeared, the bright light faded, and just her normal-looking hands remained. Lux stood up quickly and wagged her fingers vigorously, flipping her hands over to see if anything odd remained.

Satisfied she wasn't dying yet, Lux snatched her phone out of her backpack and dialed Quinn as she crumpled into her desk chair, one leg underneath her and an arm wrapped around her ribs. Lux let out a long, calming breath as the call went to voicemail. Right...Quinn's cross-country practices had started a month ago; of course they weren't taking a break just because it was the first day of school. Welp. Who else could she tell? Who else wouldn't think she was crazy, stupid, or annoying? Garen?

Inhaling deeply, Lux slowly rose from her chair and walked out into the hallway. Garen's room was just to the left of hers. She didn't hesitate in knocking on his door, or opening it when he told her to come in, but as she stepped inside his room and looked at his open, curious face, she knew she wasn't going to be able to say anything. This was so stupid. Maybe it was a stress episode? It was just a little math, but...maybe? She did put such pressure on herself these days.

"What's up?" asked her brother, leaning back in his chair to give her his full attention.

"Um…" she frowned and furrowed her brow, "Nothing, actually…" She frowned and awkwardly glanced around his room before looking back at him and shrugging weakly. "I guess I just wanted to say 'hi'."

Garen laughed good-naturedly, and grabbed his pen to get back to whatever homework he was working on. "Hi, Lux."

"Oh, by the way," he added as Lux started closing the door behind her, "Mom's just having me put in a pizza at 6, and she'll be back by the time it's done. Dad's staying late at the office tonight."

"Ok, sounds good," responded Lux, and then she closed his door and made her way back to her room.

Honestly, the act of almost telling someone her weird story face to face did a pretty good job of chilling Lux out, mostly by emphasizing how ridiculous it was. So...she might be going a little crazy, but what harm was one little hallucination, right? She'd be fine.

One more shaky-steady breath, and she pulled out her calculus book to get that homework finished. Then she froze. That scorch mark on the notebook. Was. Still. There. Maybe she was actually insane...but, she was gonna just get this homework done.

A little while later, Lux lay flopped on her back on her bed, examining her hands as she held them up toward the ceiling. What had it been? And most importantly, would it come back? Lux wasn't sure yet if she wanted it to or not. It hadn't hurt, and now that she was pretty sure it wasn't going to kill her or anything negative like that (probably?), she almost wanted it back. Like the warmth she'd felt from the light on her hands, there was a tiny - yet growing - glow in the pit of her stomach. The inkling of what could be _thrill_.

6:20. Dinner was probably ready. Time to try really hard not to think about this. Fortunately, Lux was able to live mostly in the moment with her mother and brother as they discussed school and other mundane things. Life was normal. And looking down at her very unextraordinary hand as she picked off the sausage on her pizza, everything did kind of seem normal.

All through the night until the next morning, the routine stayed the same. There was nothing out of the ordinary, no unexplained phenomena. As she sat in the car on the ride to school, Lux couldn't decide if she was disappointed or not.

Same goodbye to Garen, same sucky locker door, same scowling neighbor, same walk to class with her friends. She smiled through it all, even said "good morning" to her scowling locker neighbor, and was her same peppy, bright self. But by the end of the day, she knew she wasn't disappointed. She was expectant. Expectant that she could see that light again today. There was no real reason why she thought that it might happen again at the same time, but it was her hope anyway.

It happened as she was doing her reading for History. It was softer this time (meaning her History book luckily survived unscathed), but it lasted for longer. Lux gasped as her hands began to subtly glow, growing slightly in intensity over a few moments. It still wasn't enough to overpower the sunlight streaming through her window, but it was definitely noticeable.

Even though her heart started beating faster, and her breaths came more rapidly, there was anticipation and excitement mixed in with the apprehension. At the very least, Lux didn't believe she was going to explode, so that eased a good amount of the fear from her last experience with this. Because the light was less intense this time, the warmth on her hands was barely there, and that allowed Lux to feel something else. Again, when she flexed her hands, the light would move, but this time, Lux realized she could feel...it. Not the light itself, exactly, more like her connection to it. She was connected to it! It was a vague connection, like how you can feel it when you pinch yourself but not when you pinch someone else. This wasn't a one-ended interaction.

Sitting cross-legged on her white desk chair, the girl waggled her fingers in front of her and tilted her head at them, smiling in wonder as she tested the strange connection she was feeling. It was similar to the feeling she'd get when she remembered she could make herself slow her breathing down, or stop it completely. That feeling when she took control of something already innate. It was hard to grab onto, and the longer she tried to grasp at that connection, the more of a headache she got. After a while, she just laid her glowing hands on her knees and soaked them in, watching and feeling without trying to dig any deeper. Here in her room, alone with no thoughts of any moment but now, this truly magical event brought her pure joy. It was beautiful - to look at and to feel. It was supernatural. It was transcendent. And it was hers.

And after this realization, Lux resolved to tell no one, not even Quinn.

She hadn't said anything to Quinn at school, just in case it really was some kind of one-time hallucination, but if it happened again, she had intended to let her best friend know. But after today, Lux understood very clearly that she would be heartbroken if someone she loved so much took lightly or even negatively this thing Lux realized she cherished; this thing Lux now realized was somehow part of her. She needed time to figure out what this meant for her, and it was something that, honestly, she feared letting anyone else in for.

And so it remained a secret, for now.


	4. Hangout

p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;""Come on, Lux, let me show you the trailer again..." Ezreal was already pulling his phone from his pocket and looking up the video./spanstrong id="docs-internal-guid-2ce87737-7fff-b27a-10e5-56cb4565ffee" style="font-weight: normal;"/strong/p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;" /p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"Quinn gently nudged Lux's arm with her knuckles. "Everyone says it's amazing, and you were excited about it when we talked about this last week." Like a quizzical bird, Quinn tilted her head, regarding Lux with a best friend's speculating instinct. "Is everything alright?" /span/p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;" /p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"Lux lifted her eyebrows and smiled widely at Quinn, nodding her head and trying to laugh reassuringly. "No, yeah - I really do wanna see it! Just...I've got so much homework already; I wanna get it done tonight so I can enjoy the rest of the weekend stress-free...you know?" She glanced down and tugged on the hem of her white shirt, not very practiced or comfortable with having to lie. Fortunately, it was all technically true. /span/p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;" /p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"Unfortunately, Lux actually hadn't considered what she was going to do when she wasn't sequestered in her room at night when her hands suddenly started glowing. And when Quinn suggested they all go see Odessey tonight...well, there was no way Lux was going to have any possible way of hiding her glowing hands in the darkness of a movie theater. At least she couldn't think of a way, until she learned how to turn this stuff off. /span/p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;" /p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;""But would you guys come hang out with me at The Park tomorrow afternoon? You guys can show off your pro frisbee skills," she offered, looking over at each friend hopefully. Ezreal's face lit up immediately, and Quinn grinned competitively. And thus Lux was off the hook. /span/p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;" /p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"-/span/p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;" /p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"Sitting at her desk in her room, Lux sighed and closed her physics book. She glanced at the clock: 8:30 PM, and she was already done with all her homework. "Oooooo K," she breathed, crossing her legs up on the white chair and closing her eyes to think. What was she going to do about this...she didn't want to call it a "problem"...but it was definitely going to become one if it continued to isolate her. 'I need to learn how to control it…' she thought, not for the first time this week, but definitely much more desperately now. /span/p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;" /p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;""Ugh," she groaned in frustration, standing up in agitation and shaking out her hands as she began to pace across the expanse of her room. 'I got this, I got this,' she chanted internally, visualizing the glow of her hands dimming. /span/p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;" /p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"After a few minutes of revving herself up, she flopped onto the end of her bed and drew her legs up under her. Brows furrowed with determination, Lux lifted one of her hands up to eye level, palm opened to the ceiling, and created a little ball of light. This exercise was easy for her. The ball grew and shrunk to her will. She could even get it to move around. Finally, she extinguished the orb and focused on the passive glow around her hand. Since it was so much easier for her to create light, maybe she could practice making the glow brighter before working on turning it off completely? At least this might help her figure out what she needed to do differently to tap into the glow, which was very different than creating a detached light. /span/p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;" /p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"She flexed her hand out so that her palm stretched out toward the wall in front of her and then closed her eyes and tried to focus on the gentle feeling of warmth surrounding her hand, searching for the source of the glow. She snatched something! Scared to let the strand go, Lux furiously poured her energy into it. SNAP! A sizzling zip like the sound of a lazer shot through the room, and Lux jumped so vigorously that she bounced after hitting the bed. The hairs on her arm stood on end, and she honestly was terrified she was going to have a heart attack with the frantic way her heart was palpitating. Escalating the fear of a heart attack, the smell of burning reached her even before her eyes registered the four-inch sizzling hole in the wall before her. /span/p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;" /p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;""Nghh!" was the strangled sound that came out of Lux's throat as she leapt off the bed onto shaky legs. Complely frantic but not stupid, the girl stumbled to her bathroom, filled the glass by the sink with water, and quickly moved to her closet, which is where the hole had scorched through to. There was a hole clean through the outside wall to the walk-in-closet, and every piece of clothing in the line of her fire had a searing hole right in the middle. "AHH," cried Lux, grabbing the row of clothes and throwing them into a pile on her closet floor, hoping to smother all the embers. The glass of water had been dropped and forgotten. /span/p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;" /p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;""Oh sweet Demacia," she whispered shakily, sitting on the floor next to the destroyed pile of clothes. Was it a little much that, on top of being terrified by what she'd just done, she was also mourning the fact that one of her favorite tops had been lost in the crossfire? As well as a quarter of her shirts, and a few skirts.../span/p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;" /p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"After making sure nothing was on fire and that all the embers in the wall and on her clothes were completely put out, Lux ran downstairs to grab a trash bag for the wrecked clothes, because there was no way she was going to just throw those straight into the trash, even if she wasn't anticipating anyone causually peeking into her family's trash can. Walking back into the house after throwing out the bag and way too many of her nice clothes, Lux texted Quinn, "Hope the movie's great! Up for a shopping trip sometime?" Quinn hated shopping with a passion, but Lux knew that the invite was always appreciated, even though Quinn rarely accepted. Fortunately, Soraka always said yes. And she definitely needed a shopping trip before trying that again./span/p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;" /p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"-/span/p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;" /p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;""The Park" was what most kids at the school called the wooded slope leading down the west side of Lux's neighborhood. At the base of the woods was a huge lawn, with a pond on the south end of The Park. A few trails led up from the lawn into the trees and up the hill. Lux loved to use one of the trails to walk out from her backyard down into The Park, instead of walking all the way around her neighborhood by using the sidewalk and circling back around the hill to the lawn area. Sometimes it was kind of creepy at dusk on the lonely trail, but Lux was very familiar with the route and enjoyed the sounds of the birds on her way to see her friends. Today it was a beautiful afternoon though, and while the dense foliage filtered out quite a bit of the sunlight, it was still bright enough to be enchanting, not foreboding. /span/p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;" /p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"Ekko, Jayce, and Ezreal were already throwing a frisbee on the grass when Lux showed up. Ez caught a view of her and gave her a big wave. Smiling, Lux made her way over to him, yelling "Hi!" to Ekko, who waved back and slung the frisbee her way. /span/p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;" /p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"It was not a secret that Lux was not very athletic. Ekko, Vi, and Quinn were the strong athletes in their friend group. And Ezreal fortunately had enough hand-eye coordination to do well at frisbee and soccer. The extent of Lux's coordination was displayed when she did manage to at least catch the frisbee. 'Sorry' she mouthed to Ekko with a laugh, as she threw the frisbee wide and he had to sprint to try to get anywhere near it. Ekko alternated throwing it back to Ezreal and Lux until Quinn came and Lux dipped out to chat before Quinn got sucked up in the game of catch./span/p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;" /p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;""OhmyDemaciaLux!" Quinn shrieked, running to Lux and giving her a hug. "I have NEWS!" Vi and Senna were following behind Quinn and shaking their heads with wry smiles. Apparently this 'news' wasn't as exciting to them. /spanspan style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"br /br /span/p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;""Haha, ok ok, Quinn! What is it?" Lux laughed, releasing Quinn from her hug and holding her with both hands at arms' length. /span/p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;" /p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;""We got invited to a party! DARIUS' party!" shrieked Quinn. Lux's jaw dropped, her mouth forming a soundless 'O'. That actually was huge news, and she should have guessed. NOTHING but that one boy could get Quinn this girlishly riled up. /span/p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;" /p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;""No way! How?" asked the blonde, excitedly curious. None of their friends ran in Darius' circle. /span/p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;" /p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"Quinn grinned triumphantly at Senna, who flipped her black hair over her shoulder and shrugged with a smirk, "Luce and Darius really bonded this summer over basketball. Darius invited Luce and said he could bring anyone he wanted." Lucian was a senior and Senna's boyfriend. He also lived on Lux's street and was in Garen's friend group at school, but even though he'd been playing basketball on the same team as Darius throughout highschool, those two had never exactly been close. This year, their last year, they really wanted to win state, though, and apparently that had made a difference in their competitive friendship. /span/p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;" /p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;""Haha, wow Senna, we knew you guys should have gotten together way sooner!" joked Lux, to which Senna just smiled smugly. /span/p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;" /p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;""So the party is next Saturday," Quinn continued, drawing Lux's attention back to her, "I know I said no but," she looked over invitingly at Senna and Vi, "when did you wanna go shopping?" Vi rolled her eyes and shook her head, and Senna shrugged but smiled. Quinn bit her bottom lip and looked hopefully back at Lux. /span/p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;" /p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;""Tomorrow? Saturday morning?" suggested Lux, eliminating all the evening options. /span/p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;" /p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;""Tomorrow!" exclaimed Quinn excitedly, looking back at the other two girls for confirmation that they too could make it. Quinn giggled and sprinted over to the boys to intercept the frisbee. Lux just laughed and walked over more slowly with the other two girls. /span/p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;" /p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;""So I had no idea Quinn was so into Darius," commented Senna amusedly as they strolled over./span/p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;" /p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;""Oh, it's not just Quinn," interjected Vi with a short laugh, "Lux is in love with him, too." /span/p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;" /p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"Lux rolled her eyes, though she could feel the heat creeping up her face anyway, "I'm not in loooove with him," she protested, looking up at the sky, the trees, anywhere but the girls. "You can't deny he's really handsome, though, and charismatic, and confident, and tall..." The blonde trailed off and looked sideways at Vi and Senna, who had both started laughing. Senna was snickering softly, and Vi was straight up guffawing. /spanspan style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"br /br /span/p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;""Lux," the pink-hair girl said between laughs, "you are just so...you." /span/p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;" /p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"Lux pouted. "What do you mean?" /span/p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;" /p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"After taking a second to carefully wipe under her eyes, Vi expounded, "You're such a romantic. Just like, who uses the word 'handsome'?" Lux squinted her eyes slightly. Well, she does, ok! "Sure, Darius is hot and he knows how to work it, but you make him sound like some knight in shining armor or something." /span/p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;" /p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;""I don't…" But Lux's pouty interjection was buried underneath Vi's chortling. /span/p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;" /p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"The six friends played catch for a while, and Lux relished this time she got to spend 100% carefree with no thought being given to that increasingly inconvenient glow of hers. At around dinnertime, everyone could feel their oncoming hunger and decided to head out. With a hug and promise to meet up at the outlets in the morning for shopping, Quinn took off, leaving Lux and Ezreal as the last two. /span/p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;" /p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;""Thanks for coming out today, Ez. I was really disappointed I couldn't go with you guys last night." Lux had seen the hurt in the boy's eyes yesterday at her lame excuse, and she wanted to make sure he knew she hadn't been trying to avoid hanging out. /span/p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;" /p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;""We definitely missed you, Lux, but we know how it is with you and your grades," he responded with a genuine smile, "That really is great you get all your work done so early. You know I'm gonna be just starting everything Sunday night." They both laughed as they wandered toward the trailhead Lux usually took to go home. They both had stopped at the edge of the treeline to say their goodbyes when Ezreal spoke up, "Um, hey Lux…" He reached an arm back to run his fingers anxiously through his hair. "So, Homecoming's in a few weeks, and I know it's super early, and it's just a dance, but...wouldyouwannagowithme?" /span/p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;" /p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"Lux, who had been staring at him quizzically as he got to his point, smiled sweetly and nodded reassuringly. "Yeah, Ez. That'd be fun," she responded with a giggle, amused at how nervous he looked. It was very unlike him, and it was actually kind of endearing, especially compared to the almost obnoxious bravado he often displayed. /span/p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;" /p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"Ezreal straightened up and grinned, and Lux could almost hear the sigh of relief he was holding in. "Awesome! It's a date." His wrist twitched slightly, as if he was about to reach out to her, but he just stuck his hand in his pockets and winked at her playfully. "Have a fun time with the girls tomorrow. See you Monday!" he called over his shoulder as he walked off across the lawn toward home. /span/p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;" /p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"Lux smiled to herself and started marching up the trail. She thought about Ezreal and smiled. He was a really good friend and someone she'd known a long time, and it would be really fun to go to the dance with him. As she always said, he did tend to be the life of the party. She couldn't say no to him when he asked like that, but she knew he liked her in a 'more than friends' way, and she couldn't help but feel slightly guilty, like she was leading him on by saying 'yes'. One thing stuck in her head though. He really had been so cute when he asked; so much more vulnerable and less like a caricature of a guy. She was going to go on this date to figure out if there really could be something there for her. And if not, at least she could tell him she tried. It was really hard to tell a friend you didn't like them that way...but while his energy was earnest and exciting, there was something overbearing about it when it was directed at her. /span/p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;" /p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"As Lux was musing over her impending date with Ezreal, a completely unrelated thought came into her head. She stopped walked and took in the location around her. She was about halfway up the steep hill, and a smaller trail branched off to her left. This trail lead further on along the side of the hill before switchbacking up. Because it took her off the path to her house, Lux never took this trail unless she was just wandering around for fun. But she also was almost certain no on else took this trail either. It was less maintained than the bigger trails, not that those were frequented very often either, and it was far darker, with the foliage of the trees above and around the trail much more dense. But Lux knew something else about this trail, something that could only be discovered by actually taking it and becoming completely immersed in the darkness - there was an area on the trail that opened up slightly to a little creek and mossy ground, a lovely place to sit alone and not be found. You had to either jump the creek or use a few of the rocks protruding out of the creek to continue on the trail, which Lux had done before to follow it all the way out onto the top off the hill, almost all the way up to Jarvan's house. She found out it had easy access to the street from there, but no one from the neighborhood had ever seemed particularly interested in hiking in the first place, no matter how close the trails were. The spot by the creek drew her, and an idea started growing. She took the detour and made her way down the trail, crawling over roots and rocks along the narrow passage and pulling her phone out to use as a flashlight. It was evening now, but the trees blocked out enough light that it almost looked dark. This is what she was counting on. Eventually, she reached the small clearing. Glancing up and around, she confirmed that while the ground was clear, the scrub oak and pine above had their branches knitted so tightly that very little light made it through. Lux brushed off the idea off all the spiders lurking here, and smiled a little. No more burnt clothes for her!/span/p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;" /p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"After turning around and making it back to her house with her usual trail, Lux made herself some pasta for dinner. Her parents were out somewhere on a dinner date, and Garen was off with some friends, as was usual every Friday and Saturday night for him. Exhausted at even the thought of trying to practice more with her light tonight, the blonde sat down on the sofa in the living room and turned on the TV. Some documentary about the history of hextech augmentations was on, and Lux just kept it on to have something in the background while she scrolled through her phone and updated Soraka on her shopping plans. She was pleased Quinn was going to be coming this time. Little did Quinn know, Lux was gonna be talking her into buying a Homecoming dress as well. Lux already had a pretty hefty shopping list racked up: shirts, skirts, something cute for Darius' party, something cute for Homecoming, and light-proof gloves. /span/p 


	5. Shopping Trip

It was a major perk - for Lux - that her brother's best friend happened to live on their block, because that meant that Garen often simply walked over to Jarvan's house, leaving Lux free to borrow his car. Because she had asked nicely the evening before (and because she had a very generous older brother), Lux was on her way to pick up Quinn and Senna, who lived very near each other, to drive them all to the shopping outlets, where they'd be meeting Soraka.

"Good morning!" Lux greeted the girls brightly as they climbed into the blue mustang.

"G'morning," responded Senna from the backseat, while Quinn rolled down the window of the front seat and crossed her legs up on the dashboard in front of her.

"'Morning, Lux! You ready?"

Lux laughed at Quinn's excitement and exchanged an amused look with Senna through the rearview mirror. 'Peppy' wasn't a normal descriptor for Quinn, but it was a fun change of pace.

"Haha, yup! Let's go! Senna, wanna be in charge of music today?" Lux passed back the aux cord for Senna to plug in her phone, and then continued, "So guys...I have something to tell you…"

Well, Lux actually had quite a few things to tell them, but the news about Ezreal asking her to Homecoming was the one she had in mind at the moment. After giving them the details about how it all happened, she concluded, "So...do you think it's ok I said 'yes'? Like, when I know it's more of a friend thing for me, but I'm worried he might think it's more…"

Quinn opened her mouth to respond, but Senna beat her to it. "Of course he's gonna think it means more if you don't say anything. But there's nothing wrong with giving him a chance on a date."

Quinn nodded in agreement. "Yeah, you don't need to feel bad. If you still feel the same way about him after, just tell him. I honestly don't think it'll actually change your friendship, and I _know_ he'll get over it. I totally heard him hitting on Xayah in Trig the other day." Senna and Lux chuckled, Lux more out of relief than anything.

"Thanks," she said sincerely, smiling at each of them. She hated making anyone feel bad, and that had put her in a tough spot with Ezreal, but they were right: she was definitely overthinking it and needed to just chill out about it all.

Lux pulled into one of the stalls at in front of their first stop of their shopping trip. After texting Soraka that they had arrived, the girls got out and made their way into the store. Quinn was asserting herself as the leader of this trip, and the other girls were content to follow and browse through the sections that Quinn led them to. Since most of Quinn's clothes were pretty sporty or just casual, she was looking for something nicer for Darius' party. Fortunately, that was about the standard of Lux's 'casual', so she was able to pick out a few extra tops to replace the ones she'd lost, while Quinn worked on picking out just one new outfit for the party. Soraka was picking out a few tops as well.

"Oh wow," complimented the soft-spoken girl, "that is lovely." Soraka reached out to stroke a pastel pink crushed velvet shirt Lux had picked up. She grinned. "Would you feel awkward if we ended up wearing matching shirts?"

Lux giggled and shook her head, "Of course not! You'd look great in this!" The taller girl smiled and shuffled through the rack for her size and claiming one of the shirts for herself. Soraka was absolutely Lux's favorite shopping buddy. And also just someone Lux really enjoyed hanging out with in general. Soraka was really tall at 5'10", willowy and ethereal-looking, and her personality matched. While Lux could be a little anxious at times, she definitely tried to be upbeat and positive, and Soraka not only matched Lux's positivity, but also tempered her anxiety. The only potential negative was that Soraka was so uplifting and complimentary that Lux probably bought more clothes while shopping with her than she would without, but it was 100% worth.

Soon, they had all flocked to the dressing rooms, mostly so Quinn could get their opinons on a few different outfit options. The overwhelming winner was a navy blue chiffon top paired with dark-washed skinny jeans. Senna said it best: "You look bad-ass. And hot." Lux giggled and Quinn smiled confidently. She looked great and very Quinn.

Quinn encouraged everyone to pick out their outfits they were thinking of wearing for the party so they could see what the entire squad would look like. Lux raised an eyebrow with a surprised smile at hearing Quinn's demand. Quinn was never about the group, usually leading the pack ahead by herself or taking off on her own, both literally and in spirit. It was becoming more and more cemented just how much her best friend was wanting to make an impression at this event.

Lux had picked out a silver keyhole halter top and some white pants for the party. Standing next to her three friends in the mirror, she did stand out a little. While she was the shortest at 5'6", she wasn't too much shorter than Senna and Quinn. It was her outfit. She was the only one who wasn't wearing blue denim of some shade. Like, who wore white pants? Lux wanted to look nice, but she wasn't comfortable with standing out too much. This was a little too much, she decided, for a high school party. Since she adored the top and could imagine many functions to wear it to, she decided she would pair it with some black pants she had at home. Senna was just wearing some clothes she'd picked out for fun, since she wanted to buy a dress for Homecoming today instead of spending money on other clothes, and Soraka decided she really loved the pink velvet top paired with some light blue jeans. Somehow, it really worked on her.

Extremely pleased with their success, Quinn took her final pick of the blue top and jeans and lead the group to check out. Next, lunch! Then on to dress shopping.

With their shopping bags in hand (for all except Senna), the girls walked over to the dress store. Homecoming at their school was not considered a "casual" dance, but it wasn't overly fancy either. This happy medium was enough for Lux to convince Quinn to come.

"I don't even think you would need a dress for this dance, Quinn. Just come in that nice new outfit!" begged Lux as they walked.

Quinn rolled her eyes. "I've never gone to a dance, and I don't intend to start now. I don't want to be a third wheel to you and Ez anyway," she added, arching a brow at Lux and quirking her mouth as if holding back a grin.

"Pleeeeeease!" Lux suddenly exclaimed intensely, realizing she neeeeded Quinn there.

Senna grinned and added, looking straight ahead still, "Eh, you're not missing out on anything, Quinn. You definitely don't need to come." Lux stared at Senna with wide eyes. Soraka smiled softly and shook her head.

By the time they had reached the store, Lux still hadn't convinced Quinn to go. Giving up for the moment, Lux started perusing through dresses with Quinn, who was looking on behalf of Lux, and Senna, who was attending the dance with her boyfriend. Soraka wandered over to look at some long flowing skirts that fit her style more than dresses did. She was thinking of asking Taric, a senior, and wanted to be prepared to come back for something if he said 'yes'.

"Ooh Lux," purred Quinn, holding up a white sleeveless dress, "I think Ezreal would like this dress very much. You could wear it again for your wedding." Lux just glared at Quinn silently while the brown-haired girl cracked herself up. Lux was still not in a joking mood about the situation, even while her anxiety and guilt about it had died down tremendously. Quinn on the other hand was in a great, uncharacteristically giddy mood.

Lux sighed and rolled her eyes at Quinn after a second. "NO white." She didn't even care that it actually didn't matter. Now that Quinn had put it into her head, of course Lux neurotic enough not to forget a little joke like that.

"Oooh!" Quinn kept exclaiming excitedly as she pulled possibilities from the rack and slung them over her arm.

Eventually, all four girls were in the dressing room. Quinn sat in a chair outside the stalls and appraised each girl as they came out to share their options. After some debating and encouragement from the girls collectively, the three settled on their final picks. Soraka ended up deciding just to purchase her floor-length flowery purple maxi skirt, because she wanted to wear it regardless of whether or not she ended up going to the dance. Senna picked out a slinky royal blue dress that she looked absolutely gorgeous in, and Lux picked out a light blue A-line dress with a skirt that stopped right above her knees.

Now every girl had at least one shopping bag as they headed back to the parking lot. "Thanks so much for coming, Soraka," said Lux as she gave Soraka a hug after opening the trunk to stow their shopping bags. "It was great to get to hang out." Soraka was amazing, and getting to hang out with her without Ahri also being there was just wonderful. Ahri had something very specifically against Lux for some reason - not that the brunette was very nice in general - and it always left Lux feeling uncomfortable or just outright low after an extended encounter with her. The fact that Soraka was somehow good friends with Ahri was difficult for Lux to forget when trying to make plans that didn't have Ahri involved.

After everyone said goodbye to Soraka, who headed home in her own car, the three other girls got into Garen's mustang, and Lux drove them home. The three spent the car ride singing to one of Senna's playlists together, windows down and not a care in the world. That is, until Lux had dropped her friends off and was alone on her way back home. It hit her like a ton of bricks, shocking her into a reality she had forgotten was reality now. Because, days like this used to be normal; she didn't have to worry about the fact that she'd forgotten to buy gloves, which were now necessary in her life to hide an increasingly complicated attribute of herself.

With a groan, Lux grit her teeth in frustration. The day had felt completely normal up until this moment, like it had felt for the last 16 years of her life. Why was it that her life couldn't be that way anymore? Well, she wasn't going to be turning around to go back to the store. Angry about the fact that she even had to think about this, the blonde just wanted to crawl into her bed and not come out. And that's what she did when she got home. She grabbed her bags, carefully restocked her closet with her haul, and then changed into an old t-shirt and shorts, grabbed her laptop from her desk, and climbed into bed with the covers pulled up to her chin with just her arms out so she could order the gloves online. She just HAD to figure this out, and this week with her new study nook away from prying eyes and a house to burn down, she was going to really begin to work.


	6. Bad Day

The next morning, Lux woke to her alarm sounding at 6 AM. Lethargically, she got out of bed and made her way to the bathroom to start her Monday. Blinking blearily into the mirror, Lux could already tell she looked a mess. Her eyes were swollen and red, and her face looked weary and sorrowful. She'd thought the light was a gift, beautiful and special and mystifying and precious. How quickly it had turned into a curse.

Feeling like she needed to really shake off last night's pity party that she'd thrown herself, Lux decided to take a shower. Without even grabbing new clothes to change into yet, the girl turned on a hot shower, threw her clothes on the bathroom floor, and got in. The water was soothing and rhythmic, allowing her to close her mind to everything but the feeling of the pounding droplets on her skin. She just stood there for a moment, allowing herself the reprieve of completely blanking out. But eventually she tore herself out of it and quickly soaped up and shampooed her hair before ending the shower.

Still trying to keep her mind off her looming, stressful issue and simply on the school day ahead, Lux focused on morning routine. She picked out her clothes for the day - just a light gray t-shirt with a pair of blue jeans - and picked up her clothes from the bathroom floor and put them in the hamper where they were usually supposed to go. She dried her hair, threw on a black headband, brushed her teeth, and packed her bag for school.

"Hey, Lux," greeted Garen as Lux entered the kitchen. He glanced over at the clock on the microwave. "You're cutting it kinda close today...we have to go. You should grab an apple or something for breakfast…"

The blonde just shrugged and walked past him to the garage door. Garen grabbed an apple and followed right behind her.

He got into the driver's seat of the car and pulled out of the garage silently, casting a sideways look at his sister once they were on the road heading toward school. "Are you doing ok this morning?" he asked her with a furrowed brow. "You look...stressed." 'Grumpy' had also crossed his mind.

She just shrugged, and then realizing that he'd keep pressing her even more if she didn't talk, Lux turned to him pointedly and enunciated, "I'm fine." That sounded very final to Garen, though not at all explanatory or believable. And not wanting to poke at his angry sister more than necessary, he backed off.

"Here," he said, pulling out the apple from his jacket pocket immediately after parking at their school, "Take this just in case you get hungry later. Please." Lux couldn't help but smile a little in gratitude to her older brother as she took the fruit.

"Thanks."

She exited the car and walked into their high school with the apple in hand.

Today, as usual, Lux's locker was putting up major resistance at being opened. Lux was not having it. With a scowl and a frustrated exclamation, the blonde slammed her palm onto her locker before trying the combination again and pulling with all her enraged might. Fortunately, she had very effectively warned her neighbor of the impending flying sheet of metal, and he was able to catch the door flinging toward his face before it hit him.

"What is your problem today?" growled the boy from beneath his navy hoodie, shoving the door back at the blonde. Lux glared up at him with storming blue eyes.

"What's my PROBLEM?" she snapped back, holding the locker door open between them with her arm. Unconsciously still defending her secret, she was good at keeping her voice soft, but her tone rapidly devolved into hysteria as she went on. "Where do I even BEGIN? I've become a certified freak, my life is becoming an inescapable prison where I have to lock myself away because I'm starting to realize that something I thought was awesome is actually hell because of course how am I actually supposed to tell anyone without them thinking I'm crazy, and how am I supposed to show them without them freaking out, and this is all becoming such a nightmare and NO ONE can understand, AND did I mention that I MYSELF am going insane?!" Lux just shoved at the locker door again in response to Talon's stunned silence and chucked her apple into her locker, followed quickly by a few books, before slamming the door closed.

"Heeey, Lux!" Lux literally jumped and spun around at the sound of Ezreal's voice coming up behind her.

"Ez!" she greeted him shakily, but throwing on a bright smile. "Where've you been?" she asked horrified at how long he might have been standing there.

Ezreal laughed and responded, "I seriously JUST walked through the doors; I was late leaving and had to run to make it." That's when Lux noticed the slight sheen of sweat on Ezreal's forehead and neck and that he was breathing kind of hard, very similar to her, though she hadn't been running.

She kept up her maybe-overly-eggagerated smile and breathed a sigh of relief just as the bell rang, making her jump a little again.

"Ok, well, we don't want your marathon to have been for nothing. Let's get to class," she said with a soft laugh, and Ezreal bounced along beside her, chatting with her about how their days had gone yesterday. Talon frowned slightly and narrowed his eyes as he watched Lux walk away.

Lux, as usual, was able to go about the rest of her day pretty normally. It was almost like how she'd coped last week before she discovered how stressful and how isolating hiding this was going to be. Last night had been when the enduring reality of it had set in, and it had just become a liiiiittle overwhelming. Apparently it had carried over a liiiiittle bit into this morning as well. But after faking it through a couple class periods, she did genuinely start to feel better about everything.

And right at the time she began to feel genuinely better, she walked into her physics class and remembered that she was going to have to see Talon again. Stiffly, she walked over to her desk by Janna and sat down, determinedly looking down at her desk when she saw the shape of Talon enter the classroom in her peripheral vision. He took his usual seat at the desk behind Janna's, and Lux put her hand to her forehead in embarrassment over her outburst this morning. She really hoped that he was as aloof as he looked, because she could not handle the news going around the school that she was suffering a mental breakdown.

That class period was 50 minutes of awkward discomfort for Lux as she sat there during the lecture imagining him judging her, eyes boring into the back of her head and thinking awful things about her, plotting how to make her suffer for her slip-up. The thought was so consuming for her that she couldn't even follow what was going on up on the whiteboard. As soon as the bell rang, she headed for the door.

"Wow, Lux," commented Quinn as they walked toward the locker rooms from the track, sweating from their jog, "I've never seen you run like that. You've never been...so invested before." Quinn stopped herself from saying 'fast'.

Lux shrugged and held the locker door open for Quinn. "I just felt like I needed a good run today."

"Running harder isn't going to make you any prettier, Luxanna," came a haughty voice from behind, "so you should just go back to walking. Wouldn't want to hurt yourself." Ahri sashayed past Lux and Quinn, toward the lockers, followed by her entourage of Xayah and Sarah, who were smirking.

"You wouldn't know pretty if it broke your kneecaps, Ahri," sneered Quinn, her alto voice taking on a subtly threatening tone.

Ahri just chuckled and looked over her shoulder condescendingly, flipping back her dark hair. "Oh please, Quinn; you of all people to be talking." Xayah and Sarah laughed and disappeared with Ahri into another aisle of lockers.

"I cannot believe Soraka is friends with her," seethed Quinn, balling up her P.E. shirt and throwing it into her backpack. "One day she's gonna pick a fight without her little bodyguards, and we'll see how pretty she is at the end of that." Lux just smiled slightly at Quinn's little rant as she changed into her regular clothes. Unlike Vi, Quinn never actually fought anyone, though she could. And only one person ever incited the desire in her to beat someone up. Fortunately for Ahri, Xayah was someone Quinn knew could match her in a fight. If not for that, Quinn could probably 1v2 Ahri and Sarah at the same time. Lux, on the other hand, was intimidated by Ahri and just tried to avoid her as much as possible. While Ahri was mean to anyone she considered beneath her (essentially, most people outside her clique), sometimes Lux felt like Ahri especially had it out for her, and honestly, it really hurt.

Ahri's unwarranted jabs couldn't make Lux feel much worse than she already did today, so she didn't dwell on it as she usually might have. Her thoughts were occupied in anticipation of tonight's experiments in her new secret training ground. If she had to zone out for the rest of the day to make it through until then, she would.


	7. Worst Luck Ever

((Figured out some formatting stuff, so - like all the boring parts of this story and places where I was obviously too lazy to go into things - just ignore the changes to how I do breaks and stuff. One day when I finish this rough draft, I'll make all the formatting consistent as I edit and re-upload chapters and stuff. Sorry it's painful in many ways until then :) We have two years of the story to go, so I'm just gonna keep trying to chug the basic stuff out. This is 100% for me, but hopefully some parts of it become interesting to you eventually haha.))

* * *

Lux looked up from her physics book as her phone lit up and started beeping softly. The time was 11:30 PM. Lux closed the book and grabbed her phone, getting off her bed to throw on a light cardigan and her shoes. Quietly, she went downstairs and dialed in the security code to the alarm system so she could let herself out the backdoor. She made her way to the back gate of her backyard and cringed at the creak of the hinges. If she was going to be doing this every night from now on, she was probably going to want to oil those.

Soon, Lux was on the main trail she usually took down from her house to The Park. She had a flashlight in hand, though her hands were glowing (thankfully, her new gloves were to be arriving tomorrow afternoon). She took a right onto the trail she had scoped out that weekend and walked until she arrived at the clearing. Turning off the flashlight, Lux smiled a little to herself, unafraid of the dark here. Now she could get to work.

Lux took a seat on a rock near the stream and started conjuring small orbs of light that floated above her palms. That had been the first thing she had consciously done with her light, and it remained extremely simple for her.

She had been studying the chapters about optics in her physics book. Unfortunately, not much had seen particularly relevant to her. It was still fun for her to learn about, but nothing had helped her break through to how she was supposed to control this better. Her strategy was going to be to just work through exercises with the intent of becoming more deliberate in her usage of her powers while also hoping to stumble upon the way to turn off her glow - her ultimate priority that she just had no clue how to approach.

For now, she worked on trying to move the orbs of light around. Accidentally, like how she'd created a laser, she got an orb to move. Then she just kept messing around with that technique to start doing it deliberately. At the end of an hour, she was genuinely smiling as she threw around multiple orbs of light. The wonder and fun of the first time she'd discovered her powers had been restored.

* * *

The next morning, Lux groaned as her alarm sounded. Ok, either she couldn't be out as long, or she needed to move up the time for her practice sessions. Or both. Hopefully she'd figure out the right balance during the course of this first week.

Eyes still blurry and half closed, Lux threw off her sheets and rolled out of bed onto her feet. In the bathroom, she brushed her teeth and then pulled her blond hair up into a ponytail, yawning as she did so. Lux moved to leave the bathroom and go downstairs but hesitated. Staring hard into the mirror, she wrinkled her nose and grabbed a tube of mascara from her cabinet. She didn't always wear makeup, even something as light as macara, but she felt she had to do something to try to soften the tiredness evident on her face. After applying a quick coat to her lashes, she went downstairs for breakfast.

At school, Lux's only locker neighbor present was Olaf, who was in no danger of ever getting hit by Lux's locker door, and thus they had a very happy non-interacting neighborly arrangement ('happy' because Olaf's arms were practically as thick as Lux's thigh and he was notorious for getting into fights, which Lux found extremely intimidating). Already her Tuesday was two for two better than her Monday.

"Hey, Lux," greeted Ezreal with a grin, catching up with Lux on their way to English.

"Hi, Ez," she responded with a genuine smile. He'd been different these last few days. Much more...confident? Maybe 'secure' was a better word for it. He'd always come off as confident before, but it had seemed a little overtuned to Lux, like compensation. Now, the overly cocky exterior was noticeably absent. Still confident, but in the good way. Lux giggled to herself, suddenly wondering if any of his friends had something to do with this change.

Ezreal raised a brow at her, and she skipped a few steps and shook her head. "It's nothing, I promise. Just having a good day!"

"Haha, that's good."

The rest of Lux's day continued to be good. She and Quinn and Vi chatted about a club poster they saw get posted, reminding them to start coordinating to join at least one club together. The furthest they got before they got to History was an agreement that they needed to discuss this more.

In Physics, Lux discovered that Talon wasn't one to make things awkward. She came to the conclusion that he just didn't care about anyone's existence enough to judge them, which was a weight off of her, as someone who cared a lot what other people thought and had been feeling so guilty about going off yesterday. As for the rest of her classes: Ahri and her group stayed away during P.E., Calculus was a breeze, and she even understood some of what was going on in French. The school day felt like it had gone by quickly, and that was wonderful. After blazing through her homework tonight, she was feeling good about having another night of practice. Finally, it felt like she'd be able to handle things.

* * *

This was Lux's fifth night of diligent magic practice. Shehad moved her practice on school nights up to 10 PM, but since tonight was Friday night - and because she'd had much more weekend

homework to get done today than last Friday - she had started practice at 11:30.

VZZOOvv! The electric sound of the laser reverberated through Lux's outstretched hands as she shot the focused light into the stream. Creating her laser wasn't as scary as the first time, which had been last week when she'd seared a huge hole into her closet wall (a hole that she had yet to patch and was merely hiding with her laundry hamper so far). That first time had been educational for sure, and she understood how to pour her energy into the light because of it. She wouldn't call it "controlled", but it was more or less on purpose, so that was progress.

Smiling and wiping her brow with the back of her hand, Lux decided to take a break from laser practice and work on something less strenuous. Circular scorch marks of varying sizes decorated the floor around the clearing. A couple days earlier, while experimenting with throwing her light orbs around, Lux had discovered that she could also create pools of light - singularities, she called them - around her and detonate them in a blinding explosion of light. These kinds of experiments were proof that she'd made a good choice in moving outside her room for practice.

The pools took noticeably less energy than the laser, especially when she kept them small, around one to two feet in diameter. These pools were her new favorite things to work on, especially because learning to place them precisely was a fun challenge for her to try to master. She definitely had a lot of work to do on that, but she could choose the size of the pools pretty consistently, so she had that going for her at least.

Concentrating on positioning the pool just right, Lux swept one of her hands out in front of her and summoned a small pool of light...and it was _almost_ where she'd directed it to go. Well, she decided she was gonna call it _almost_...it really wasn't.

The further she threw it, the more difficult it was for her to position accurately, so those long-range singularities were what she especially wanted to drill. Without a small flick of her fingers, Lux detonated the current singularity. She took a steading breath and fixated on a point at the very edge of the small clearing, only about 15 feet from her, but far enough that her precision was very shaky at that distance. Sweeping her arm out as if tossing a frisbee out in front of her, Lux threw a medium-sized pool, missing her mark by a few feet.

"Ah!" she shrieked in surprise, jumping a foot in the air and clamping a hand to her chest. Goosebumps rose instantly over her arms. Someone stood illuminated by the singularity.

Panicked, Lux instantly detonated the pool of light, intending to plunge the clearing into darkness to hide. Turns out, Lux's entire body was glowing.

Lux froze as she realized that there was no hiding. Was there, perhaps, the possibility to run...Indecision just left the girl standing there like a deer in headlights. The intruding figure also had not moved a muscle.

Seconds of pure silence passed as Lux's mind whirled over options, realizing desperately that the longer she stood there, the more of this was being taken in by the other person. The nightmare scenario that had escalated her anxiety level through the roof during the last week was happening to her right now. She was not prepared! All she wanted to do was disappear.

Gulping, Lux decided she just had to beg whoever this was to keep her secret. She'd move to the frozen tundras of Freljord as soon as she got home. She opened her mouth to say something, but nothing came out. It took her two tries to even clear her throat. "Ahem…" she finally mustered, staring wide-eyed at the shadowy figure. "Please...can we talk?" It occurred to her immediately after this question that this person could be dangerous to her in ways other than exposing her secret. What kind of person wandered these woods at midnight? Was she going to die? Could she defend herself with her light?

Suddenly spurred by survival instinct, Lux threw out a pool of light toward the feet of the figure so that there was no way it could come closer without being at the mercy of her light explosion. She made the pool big enough that even though she didn't end up throwing it as near to the figure as she wanted, it still completely blocked the path to her. That bolstered her courage immensely...at least concerning the possibility of being murdered.

The figure ducked his hooded head and shielded his eyes from the bright light, responding gruffly, "Yes, let's talk. Get that light out of my face."

Lux recognized that voice and now that figure. Realizing it was Talon, she lowered the intensity of the light from the singularity at his feet, but she didn't extinguish it completely. Slowly, Talon lowered his arm from his eyes and looked over at Lux, his jaw clenched and eyes narrowed.

After some silence, Lux realized that he was waiting for her to speak. What could she even say? "Um…" she began softly, biting her bottom lip as she trailed off. "Please don't tell," was all she could come up with. Talon's head notched slightly to the side, obviously dissatisfied. "What am I supposed to say?!" she said desperately, not knowing where to go from here. "I can...do stuff with light, apparently. I don't know why; I don't really know how; and I've been too scared to tell anyone, so I've been hiding out here at night to try to figure out how to control it, ok?"

Talon's eyes briefly left Lux's distraught face and flicked over the now well-illuminated clearing, gleaning some important information about the circle of light on the ground in front of him by paying attention to the numerous circular scorch marks marring the area. His gaze flicked back to her face. "How long do you think you can hide this?" he asked, his voice stoic with only sliver of incredulousness.

The fear Lux felt about that question broke through as her eyes teared up. "I don't know," she admitted truthfully, bowing her head slightly, like it had become to heavy to hold up. "But I just…" Her voice quivered. "I just can't go around telling people about this. N-not until I figure it out." She left out the important detail that it might not be up to her whether others found out (even outside these woods), considering she couldn't turn this glow off yet. It didn't matter, as Talon had already put that together.

Lux's glow dimmed and Talon's rigid posture relaxed considerably as the two calmed down. Finally, Talon shrugged and stated, "I have no one to tell. No one will find out from me." The blonde frowned and furrowed her brow slightly at his implication.

"No one will find out. Period," she retorted firmly. Talon just moved his attention to the light pool impeding his way.

"Are you gonna turn this off? I need to get through," he said, flipping his flashlight in his hand and turning it on.

Lux nervously shifted and looked at the singularity and then back at Talon. "You truly promise you won't tell?"

The boy sighed but looked directly at Lux, responding deliberately, "Yes." He abhorred promising anything and only had one other promise looming over him. But this one would honestly be very easy to keep, so he deemed it harmless.

"Thank you," Lux replied hesitantly, definitely not convinced that she could trust this guy she barely knew and who effortlessly gave off the aura of not caring about anything. But she was resigned to the fact that there was nothing she could do about it at this point. He knew what he knew.

She dimmed the singularity out of existence instead of detonating it, and Talon cautiously moved forward, eyes scanning the ground. "It's out," she assured him, but his eyes kept flicking periodically to the scorched dirt around him.

"Um, so what are you doing out here anyway?" she asked as he passed by her.

"Nothing," was his short response.

Lux folded her arms in frustration. "It can't be 'nothing'. What were you doing?" she pressed again, now sure it was something shady. She could just feel it.

Talon looked over his shoulder and eyed her conspiratorially. "If you ever catch me, I guess I'd have to tell you. We know how that goes." Lux narrowed her eyes but couldn't really argue. "Good luck with that, though," he taunted her, disappearing onto the trail.

Lux continued to look off in the direction Talon had taken off. She realized it did make sense that someone from his area of the neighborhood would take this particular offshoot of the trail to go home, if they were coming up from The Park. But the possibility of anyone using these trails, especially at this time of night, had been so infinitesimal…What cursed luck.

With a heavy sigh, Lux left in the opposite direction. It was probably time for her to go home too. Even though her parents were out of town as usual this weekend, not that they were consumed with her whereabouts when they were in town, sometimes Garen liked to knock on her door to check if she was home before he went to sleep.

The house was dark when she got home, so Lux checked the garage to see if Garen's car was here. It was missing, meaning Garen wasn't just asleep. Lux went upstairs to her room, changed into her sleep clothes, and got into bed. She wasn't sure if she'd be able to sleep though, as there was a lot going on. First, someone knew her secret now. And it wasn't Quinn, who was the person Lux had expected was going to be the first person Lux told. That still probably would be the case, considering Talon had more _seen_ than been _told_. The next issue was that all of Lux could apparently glow. Had that always been happening, and she just hadn't realized it? She definitely didn't always glow so...everywhere...like that, but did it always happen when her emotions were elevated? If so...her gloves might not be enough for Darius' party tomorrow. Nothing would be enough, if that was the case…

She sighed and flipped over onto her stomach, burying her face in her pillow, anxiety turning her stomach. The thought did cross her mind: if she suddenly started glowing in the middle of the party and everyone reacted as apathetically as Talon, that was definitely something she could survive.


End file.
